Jules de Balincourt is charmingly normal. He hesitates to put himself on a pedestal, he doesn’t like interviews and chances are high he doesn’t know how funny he is.

A classically trained ceramicist, the artist arrived in New York nearly two decades ago and has since worked as a painter with due experience and commitment. His New York studio is filled with large amounts of different brushes arranged in curious ways. They have different purposes and will be used for different moods. But, he doesn’t have a brush fetish, so he says.

Photo's by James Chororos

Jules de Balincourt’s paintings come from an intuitive place where meaning arises gradually.

To the artist, it seems borderline boring that someone would sit down and think of an idea or a project, then simply execute it to perfection and be done. Aren’t there enough things in this world which are clear and predetermined?

Instead, de Balincourt prefers to give agency to the process. What seems like an escapist theory if applied to all areas of life is inherently sensible in an artistic way. There is a starting point and there is painting – then, when the moment passes, the artist puts down his brush and stops. Maybe, he moves on to another painting.

There are multiple paintings hanging on Jules de Balincourt’s studio wall at all times. Like temporary exhibitions of the mind, they are work-in-progress pieces arranged in ways to communicate with each other and be examined for shared relationships by inquisitive eyes.

Once the first painting is done, there is the beginning of a narrative. What does the next image need to respond or oppose to?

His elaborate paintings aren’t about art history, they don’t reference schools of thought, they don’t aim to speak to a certain audience. They are to be taken in without an expensive art education or the necessary elitism. If that’s why people call them inclusive, then maybe they are.

There is something idealistic and calm about the artist who paints subject matter from politics to landscape in bold and appropriately moody colours. Currently, he is setting up an artist residency in Costa Rica.